Leprosy treatment in the south very poor - officials

Leprosy patients in the south of the country have been suffering from a lack of medical assistance and poor living conditions according to health officials. They have been confined to a five-room quarantine hospital built from cement bricks without sanitation or power located in Butaiyrah district, 50 km north of the city of Amarah, in the southern Missan governorate. Leprosy is a chronic but curable disease caused by a bacillus which is not highly infectious. It is transmitted via droplets, from the nose and mouth during close and frequent contact with untreated people. It mainly attacks the skin and nerves causing gross disfiguration and disability if left untreated. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over the past 20 years, there have been more than 12 million leprosy patients worldwide. The disease has been eliminated from 108 of the 122 countries where it was considered a serious public health issue in 1985. But the Ministry of Health (MoH) says that nearly 400 people are currrently living with leprosy in Iraq. Dr Zamil Mohammed al-Mohamdawi, head of the Health Directorate in Amarah, told IRIN that they have been facing many difficulties in dealing with leprosy patients. "We have appointed medical support and two assistants to take care of the patients in quarantine. But there are no refrigerators to keep the medicine and there is no electricity and water either," al-Mohamdawi said. "We have asked the governorate of Amarah for support but there has been no response yet and even the generator, we had bought for them, has been stolen by thieves," he added. The unit has not received any supplies of leprosy drugs since the war to oust Saddam Hussein began in March 2003, officials said. During Hussein's regime, the quarantine department had 24 temporary patients and nearly 90 temporary ones. The government was supporting the patients with medical supplies but little else and the facility had always been in a dilapidated state. Dr Abdullah al-Hakeem, a medical lecturer at Basra University, said that infected patients posed a real health risk and were capable of infecting many others, particularly those with leprosy at large in the wider community. With the Amarah clinic now being so poorly resourced this problem is now growing, he said. Discrimination is another challenge faced by leprosy patients both past and present. "Two years ago I was considered healthy and cured by local doctors. I was happy and I went to see my sons in Amarah and was expecting them to welcome me. But instead they forced me out from their houses, telling me I was a liar and was going to contaminate them, telling me never to show my face there again," Fakhria Adday, a 51-year-old patient at the leprosy clinic said. In the face of such prejudice, she's back at the facility and is now exposed to the disease again. "I do not have anywhere to go and for this reason I'm here living in the quarantine again, in the middle of the disease because at least I will be respected between patients," she said. WHO in the capital, Baghdad, told IRIN that they were going to send a special mission to the city to study the leprosy situation there, adding that the situation could become serious if the disease is allowed to spread. "The disease is eating the bodies of the patients day by day. They are in a very bad psychological condition," Dr. Abdulrazaq al-Saadi, a volunteer at the leprosy quarantine centre, said.